‘Ah, good. I’ve got breakfast ready. Come out to the kitchen,’ his sister said, sticking her head around the corner.
He looked over at the coffee table and realised someone must have cleaned up. Before he’d fallen asleep, there’d been a line-up of empty beer cans there. As he sat up slowly, he winced, his headache beating steadily in time with his pulse.Ouch.
After splashing his face with water in the bathroom, he felt marginally better—at least better enough to face his sister out in the kitchen.
‘You’ve looked better,’ she said without any sign of sympathy.
‘Thanks.’
‘Why men think drinking their sorrows away will help anything is beyond me.’ She shrugged.
‘I wasn’t planning to. Your husband kept plying me with alcohol.’
‘You’re a big boy now. You could have said no at any time.’
Fair point. ‘What took you so long, anyway. I was waiting up for you to get back.’
‘I made a stop to see an old friend on the way home.’
‘Why?’
‘Because something was really wrong about that whole DNA test thing, and it was driving me mad. You remember Mary Bishop from school?’
‘No,’ he said, shaking his head as he accepted a plate of bacon and eggs.
‘She and I were thick as thieves growing up. Anyway,’ she said when he continued to show no recognition of who she was talking about, ‘she’s a genetic engineer, so I figured I might be able to pick her brain about the whole thing.’
‘And? Did it help?’
Floss took a sip of coffee. ‘It raised a whole heap of new questions.’
‘Like?’
‘Like, for instance, that particular test is done with cheek swab samples.’
‘I never did a cheek swab. I’m pretty sure I would have noticed,’ he said.
‘That’s what I thought. So I confronted Dad.’
‘What?’ Ewan said, his knife and fork poised mid-air.
‘Last night when I got home. I know,’ she said wearily as he opened his mouth, ‘I should have waited for you, but I saw that you’d been drinking and figured that probably wouldn’t have helped anything. So I made the call.’
‘What happened?’
‘I told him I’d had the report looked over by a professional and that I knew he was lying. He denied it of course, fora while, but then he admitted that he’d supplied the cheek swab, which I’d kind of figured, after talking with Mary.’
‘What?’
‘I know … crazy. But it guaranteed the result he was after.’
‘I just don’t understand why he did it.’
‘I think he genuinely believed he was protecting the family legacy. Losing his own inheritance—the whole betrayal from his own father—it’s been what drives him. He came over here to start his own line—continue the family legacy so to speak. Arran was supposed to inherit this place,’ she said, shrugging. ‘There was never any secret about it. Despite the fact I was the eldest, it was always his intention to pass this place down to the first-born son.’
‘It’s freaking archaic,’ Ewan muttered.
‘Yep, but that’s our stubborn father.’ They sipped their coffee in silence, both mulling over their own thoughts.
